Hard sell, soft sell: more than left brain versus right brain

I started with a tempting idea: perhaps countries respond to different advertising styles because of how they think. The UK gets feelings and slow violins; the Netherlands gets facts, price tags and practical shoes. One supposedly “right-brained,” the other “left-brained.”

Then I stopped. Do we switch brains at the border? That shorthand is much too neat. The useful distinction is between emotional and more explicit persuasive appeals, and even those overlap.

When I really watch an advert—the kind everyone forwards and asks whether you have seen—I often feel something before I start evaluating it. Laughter, belonging, recognition. Then come the questions: can I afford this, do I need it, is it me? Sometimes those responses happen together. There is no single sequence that explains every viewer.

So I compared three countries I know well: Mexico, the Netherlands and the UK. Their advertising can feel worlds apart, but all three mix hard sell and soft sell, sometimes in the same campaign. The interplay is more interesting than the label (Okazaki, Mueller & Diehl, 2013; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

Mexico gives me emotional warmth, dramatic storytelling and the ability to turn almost anything into a heartfelt moment. You might expect wall-to-wall telenovela tearjerkers. Yet there are plenty of direct, urgent appeals too—as direct as a michelada on a hot day.

Elektra’s weekly-payment advertising makes a practical proposition prominent: what you can buy and how you can pay for it. But that practical detail can sit inside a story about family needs. The financial information and the emotional reason to act are doing different jobs in the same advert.

Cerveza Victoria’s Día de Muertos advertising takes another route. Identity, tradition, memory and cultural pride do the heavy lifting. I cried; I saw something of myself in it. There is little need for an urgent price comparison when the purchase is familiar and relatively small. The distinction may have as much to do with the product and the decision as with nationality.

Even here, there is room for “Show me the money!” when a purchase is substantial. Emotion and practicality are perfectly capable of sharing a table.

The Netherlands gives me straight talking, dry humour and “doe normaal”—act normal; that is quite enough. Dutch advertising can be wonderfully no-nonsense without being emotionally empty. The feeling is often wrapped in something awkward or funny.

Blokker’s price-drop advertising puts large prices and an immediate offer in front of you. Yet a recognisable domestic situation can make the commercial funny as well as informative. The facts do not cancel the emotional connection. What makes me laugh, though, might not travel neatly to another audience.

Beter Bed provides a similar puzzle. Advice about sleeping well can express empathy, while pricing or payment information keeps the offer practical. Add deadpan delivery and eager sales patter and I start wondering where the soft sell ends. To a viewer who does not share the humour, the very same advert may feel much harder.

That is when the categories become interesting: perhaps “hard” and “soft” partly describe the observer’s experience, not just the advertiser’s technique. Consumer culture matters to interpretation (Arnould & Thompson, 2005).

Then there is the UK: irony, restrained emotion, and collective excitement when the John Lewis Christmas advert arrives. The range is gloriously unpredictable. Ghosts selling phones; lonely men on the moon at Christmas.

Phones 4U’s haunted advertising wraps a commercial offer in something strange and memorable. It is a hard sell wearing a Halloween costume. Information and entertainment share the job.

John Lewis’s “Man on the Moon” works differently. A telescope, a lonely figure and a slowly unfolding story carry the emotional weight. The selling is less explicit, but the brand is still there. It sits in your chest for a bit. Sneak attack. I would love to see how that feeling translates into purchasing behaviour.

So I do not think this is a left-brain versus right-brain contest. Advertising can hook a feeling, offer a reason, or do both at once. The balance shifts with the product, the occasion and the audience. In the examples I notice, Mexico combines passion with practicality; Dutch advertising mixes logic with humour; British advertising makes room for jokes, tears and reasons to buy. The clever question is not which half of a brain a country uses. It is what a particular audience will recognise, feel and believe.